home
“In the truest sense, Christian pilgrims have the best of both worlds. We have joy whenever this world reminds us of the next, and we take solace whenever it does not.”
- C. S. Lewis
My mom and I were in the car one time and I was navigating us somewhere with my phone’s GPS. Randomly I noticed a Dunkin’ Donuts near us on the map. Now, I knew better (we both did as a matter of fact) there was no Dunkin’ near us. We had both lived here our whole lives, surely we would know if there was a Dunkin’ nearby. Still, we had enough time to kill and according to the GPS it wasn’t that far away so you know what we did. We followed the call of the donuts and coffee! Not really to our surprise when the GPS proudly announced that we had arrived, we were in fact not at a Dunkin’. While we knew deep down that we probably weren’t going to get any coffee or donuts on that trip there was still a small amount, at least for me, of disappointment as we drove away empty handed. Why? Well I knew it was unlikely, but the GPS is mostly reliable, right? I have used it many times before and for the most part it gets me to my destination unobstructed. Not this round. This time there was a promise of an iced caramel latte and a chocolate iced donut and I let my hopes get a little too high. Unfortunately, I was left wanting. I’m telling you this seemingly random story because I have been thinking about the idea of home a lot lately and I think we can all relate to this concept. We are all traveling through life trying to go “home”. When I talk of home here I don’t mean the walls and roof you live under, I am talking about HOME. The ultimate place of soul rest. The place for which you were made. The place in which you flourish. The place that you belong, where you are always welcome and embraced, never disregarded. Doesn’t that place sound wonderful? I think we are all trying to find it, unfortunately many have a faulty GPS. We type into the search bar “h-o-m-e” and the GPS dutifully navigates us to a new career, another university degree, a new relationship, a promotion at work, another drink, a new car, and you can fill in the blank with anything you could possibly desire. What’s wrong with this picture? Just like my GPS promised me fulfillment in the form of delicious iced coffee and it didn’t deliver so to with all the things we often chase in this life. Following the voices of this world we chase after things that promise fulfillment and happiness and we are so ultimately disappointed and confused when they don’t deliver. You might feel a little defensive and think well in your silly analogy the building you were looking for didn’t actually exist and the thing that will fulfill me does so I will keep working toward it thank you very much. That is true, but lets say for a second my GPS was correct that day. We ended up at the cafe and I got what my heart desired in that moment. Would it have really made a difference? Would I never again want another cup of coffee because that one was just so life altering and perfect? Of course not! I would probably want another as soon as my cup was empty. That is how our insatiable appetites work, they are never satisfied. If we are to fill an endless appetite we can only fill it with something that is equally endless. So where can we find this home? This place of ultimate belonging? The place our hearts so desperately desire? There is a way. There is a perfect map that can get us there! Let’s talk about it!
At home — Physical
“Home is where the heart is” well isn’t that just so precious. It turns out that idiom actually predates cheesy TJ Maxx wall signs. We credit the earliest use of it to the Roman naval and army commander, author, naturalist, and philosopher (yeah he was pretty busy), Pliny the Elder. Many say the idea behind the phrase has been around for much longer and I would agree. As an expat in Guatemala for the past five months and blessed with the opportunity to spend the holidays with friends and family, I have come to wonder about what it actually means to be home. As it can be found in the dictionary, home is: “the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.” A physical area where physical beings occupy space. These physical spaces become so closely intertwined with who we are that we can quickly feel out of place, uncomfortable, or unwelcome, in a new place that is not quite so familiar. We share a deep connection with the physical spaces in which we live and many times we may not notice them until they are missing. After returning home for the first time in about 5 months, which I realize is not very long in the big scheme of things, I was hit with waves of nostalgia. Oh I remember that place, and going over here with those people, wow that place feels smaller than I remember… and on and on you know the feeling. These spaces often fill our hearts with warmth from the special memories they hold. As much as I enjoy traveling, seeing and experiencing new things, there really is no place like home. As I reminisced on all the nostalgia over the holidays, it got me wondering, why. Why is home so special to us? Is it merely the physical nostalgia, the people with whom we share the space, a mix of both? Also, what about those who cringe about the thought of going home? They return to a physical space which is technically home, but they don’t actually feel “at home”. If we have been blessed enough to experience a good home we long for it when we are away. Those who have not had that experience still long to feel at home. How is it that this concept of home could be so central to who we are that even those who have not truly experienced it still long for a place they have never been. We were created for home. Let’s go a little deeper.
At home — Relational
Picture it, you arrive at friends house and have promptly been instructed to “make yourself at home”. What exactly does that mean to be “at home”. In this case, it’s obvious that we are not physically in our home, yet we have been instructed to make this new place home. Beyond the physical structure, the true essence of home is a place where someone flourishes. A place where one can be vulnerable, comfortable, accepted, loved, supported. It’s the place you truly belong as if you were made to fit right there and you could not think of anything that could possibly be better. It feels altogether right and real and true. Don’t we all long for a space like this? Thriving in a beautiful and secure physical environment, surrounded by people that love and care deeply for us and our well-being. There may be some that grow up in a broken home or a place that really wasn’t a home at all, but rather a place that was dangerous and altogether terrible. They search their whole lives for the space they belong, only to come up empty handed at the end. It is such a sad reality that all too many have to face. They feel alone and helpless. Others still may have all the “necessary” pieces to the puzzle and still find themselves longing. How is it that we could have the pieces in the right place, and yet still not manage to see the picture? Even the closest of relationships experience occasional dissonance. We misunderstand each other, we hide things from each other, we hurt each other (sometimes intentional and sometimes accidentally) or we might even outright disagree. There are people that know you better than others, but does anyone truly know YOU? Every thought? Every desire? Every fear? Every temptation? I would guess that we would all say the answer is no. I would even venture to say that we actually don’t even know ourselves as well as we like to think. How many times in our lives have we done something or thought something and later looked back at how foolish we had been. We don’t even understand our own actions thinking, “how could I have ever…?” We spend lots of time, energy, and money trying to “discover ourselves” and in some cases we choose instead to use things that distract us from the disconnect that lies deep in our souls. Often filling any silence as quickly as possible for fear being alone with ourselves too long. Instead of facing myself, I could turn on a Netflix show and just forget about my feelings altogether for an hour or two. Why can’t we find our home? The place where all worries and anxiety disappear. Where is the place where I can be fully known? The place where I truly feel at home.
What is the disconnect?
We all long for home as its been described. We desperately want to belong and yet in some cases we don’t even feel at home in our own bodies! We look to all sorts of things and people to find it and are often left wanting. We look for home in a new career, another degree, a relationship, a social club, another plane ticket, a new sexual identity, a political party, or add whatever else you would like to the list. Thinking if I just had __________ or if I could just achieve __________ or if only I could change my body to look like __________, then I would be accepted by people or maybe you like to think that you don’t care what other people think, and instead you think: then I could accept myself. Perhaps it is not such a well kept secret, but even if we achieved all of the things we think would ultimately take us “home” we would still wake up with the uneasy feeling of sleeping in someone else’s bed. “Nothing is more often misdiagnosed than our homesickness for Heaven. We think that what we want is sex, drugs, alcohol, a new job, a raise, a doctorate, a spouse, a large-screen television, a new car, a cabin in the woods, a condo in Hawaii. What we really want is the person we were made for, Jesus, and the place we were made for, Heaven. Nothing less can satisfy us” (Randy Alcorn, Heaven). If we truly want to find our home, we have to have a reliable map otherwise we will never arrive. The grounding reality is that we were created by a perfect God in a perfect place for a perfect purpose. “And God saw everything that he had made and behold it was very good…” (Genesis 1:31). In the beginning, God creates a perfect physical location (the garden) and placed Adam and Eve, formed in His image, to glorify him through their lives. An act of proud disobedience brought all of it crashing down. Sin entered the world and ruined God’s good creation. As a result, sin separated us from God, from each other, from the good, from our home. From that moment everything changed. In Genesis 2:25, the man and woman were naked before each other and God and felt no shame. Why? Because they were fully and intimately known by each other. They had nothing to hide from one another. No worries, anxieties, or hangups. Upon the intrusion of sin into the world, they hid themselves from each other and from God. They became ashamed; they became skeptical of each other. God’s perfect order and definition of good was rejected and chaos now ensued. Every human relationship since has been marred by the disease of sin. Even in most intimate of relationships there are areas we hide. Areas that we cannot bring to light for fear of rejection or worse. We so long to be fully known and yet something holds us back. All of the problems in the world result from our innate sin nature. If we want to truly feel at home then we will reject the direction of this world and listen to the voice of God. The one who knows us better than we even know ourselves.
The Way.
Jesus is the way home (John 14:6). Home is in the heart of Christ. The only place which can truly fulfill the deepest emptiness and longing in our hearts. There is a beautiful picture of the heart of Christ found in Matthew 8.
“When he came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him. And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.”
I added the bold text because, wow! This seemingly simple act carries profound weight. Lepers were the outcasts of society, literally referred to as “untouchables”. It was practically a death sentence to touch a leper. A leper would be rejected from the community and lose all benefits that come with living in town. Lepers desperately longed to go home. Jesus was not phased by the leper in Matthew 8. Perhaps what makes this stand out to me even more is the account which takes place in the verses that follow.
“Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.” And he said to him, “I will come and heal him.” But the centurion replied, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” And to the centurion Jesus said, “Go; let it be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed at that very moment.”
Do you see what I see? Jesus had to merely say the word and the leper would have been healed, but he instead chose to touch him! This is huge! Jesus was not disgusted or turned away by the filth or danger of disease. He accepted the man exactly how he was, but loved him too much to leave him in his disease. This is who God is! He reaches into the deepest darkest parts of our lives and brings them to life. The areas in our lives that we hold so tightly, thinking I could never let someone see this part of me because it’s bad, it dirty, it’s wholly unacceptable. Those are the places to which draw Him ever closer. Some areas we may hide from others because we don’t want to change it. We think its fine as it is. I don’t need to change. Dane Ortland paints an excellent picture of this concept;
"A compassionate doctor has traveled deep into the jungle to provide medical care to a primitive tribe afflicted with a contagious disease...But as he seems to provide care. The afflicted refuse, they want to take care of themselves. They want to heal on their own terms. Finally, a few brave young men step forward to receive the care being freely provided. What does the doctor feel? Joy. His joy increases to the degree that the sick come to him for help and healing. It’s the whole reason he came.”
- Dane Ortland, Gentle and Lowly
Because we are sinful and our judgement is cloudy, sometimes we are deceived into thinking that keeping our “leprosy” is actually good for us. We might think, I’m a pretty good person and I don’t really want to give up my way of life. In reality, He knows us even better than we know ourselves. “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased” (C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory). Anything He changes in our lives is not to harm us or because He does not accept us, rather it’s because He is reintroducing us to our real true selves. Sin has so distorted us that we no longer recognize our true identity. The changes He makes in our lives are because He knows us fully. He knows that we will only feel truly at home when we are in His presence and we allow Him to transform us from a life of sin and death to real life. If we are blessed to enjoy anything in this life, it is from God.
“What we love about this life are the things that resonate with the life we were made for. The things we love are not merely the best this life has to offer—they are previews of the greater life to come… We think of ourselves as fun-loving, and of God as a humorless killjoy. But we’ve got it backward. It’s not God who’s boring; it’s us. Did we invent wit, humor, and laughter? No. God did. We’ll never begin to exhaust God’s sense of humor and his love for adventure. The real question is this: How could God not be bored with us? Most of us can envision ourselves being happy for a few days or a week, if that. But a year of complete and sustained happiness? Impossible, we think, because we’ve never experienced it. We think of life under the Curse as normal because that’s all we’ve ever known. A hundred or a million years of happiness is inconceivable to us. Just as creatures who live in a flat land can’t conceive of three-dimensional space, we can’t conceive of unending happiness. Because that level of happiness is not possible here on the fallen Earth, we assume it won’t be possible on the New Earth. But we’re wrong. To properly envision Heaven, we must remove from our eyes the distorted lenses of death and the Curse.”
- Randy Alcorn, Heaven
We so deeply long for a home. A place with “No pretense or wearing masks. No cliques. No hidden agendas, backroom deals, betrayals, secret ambitions, plots, or schemes” (Randy Alcorn, Heaven). The most beautiful thing in the world is that Jesus provided a way to get there! We can leave behind all the shame, disease, confusion, regret, and pain! In Christ I am a new creation! This is the gospel!! This is the good news! It’s good news because the work is already complete in Christ. This home is not merely for “good people” for they do not exist. Home is for all who have been justified by the blood of Christ and that is an open invitation to anyone that chooses to humble themselves, admit they are a sinner, turn away from their old ways and put on the new self in Christ Jesus. For the Christian, we are already going home! Are you ready? Don’t pack a bag! Don’t grab any road snacks! You don’t need anything!
We’re going home!! Praise God! We’re going home!